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It started with a bottle of brandy. When she would look back on the start months later, Sienna would laugh. Something so unbecoming to a lady, a drink reserved for men and their clubs cloaked in cigar smoke. It could only have started with something so decidedly unladylike.
Sienna and Madame Delacroix formed their friendship early into Genevieve Delacroix’s first season in London. Sienna had already been in London for a few years, pursuing her passion of opera. It was worth it, even if she spent most of her time performing for the silly members of the ton. When Genevieve arrived, donning the name Delacroix to open her shop of fine dresses, Sienna spotted a like soul. A woman here to make her money, earn her keep, and gain her autonomy in return.
They became friends fast, the kind of closeness you fall into rather than develop. Sienna appeared one night after a performance, knocked on the back of Madame Delacroix’s Modiste brandishing a bottle of brandy and a grin a mile wide.
The tradition stuck. On the nights when Sienna didn’t have gentlemen to seduce for a pretty penny, she found herself on Genevieve’s backdoor. They laughed and gossiped, traded stories that members of the ton never thought twice to tell in front of working women like them.
They talked about their business, lamented when the money wasn’t enough, and schemed on how they’d reach the heavens one day all on their own. Weren’t the regency so ridiculous? Those women shackled to their husbands, lacking the freedom the two of them could so brilliantly abuse.
Sienna knew that at the end of the day, either of them would kill for half the resources of the families they made their money off of. But it never seemed worth it, to have to follow society’s lead on what it meant to be a lady. And Sienna shuddered to think of the marriage mart. She tried to imagine what it would mean to marry one of those high strung men. The ones who fancied themselves too important to care for their wives.
Sienna and Genevieve would have none of that.
Sienna wasn’t sure when it changed. She tried many times to locate the moment the pulse of their friendship quickened. When did they stop being a mere solace of camaraderie for each other? But there was no defining moment, just a slow thrum toward the inevitable.
Genevieve would laugh at her use of that word. Inevitable. They were women who made their own ways in the world. But to Sienna, this beautiful thing only made sense to her as an inevitability.
Maybe it started when Genevieve insisted upon making Sienna a new gown for the opera. Sienna had tried to deny herself the luxury, telling Genevieve that she could never afford one of her fine gowns.
“Nonsense. I will make it for you for free. It would look so much lovelier on you than the women I am forced dress.”
They flitted excitedly through the shop after hours, looking for fabric and embroidery that would catch the light on stage.
Sienna asked for a red gown, thinking the color would add a dramatic attention on stage, but Genevieve refused.
“I rather think green, like your eyes. You have the most beautiful eyes and we should want to draw attention to them.”
Sienna blushed at that. Men leered at her body all night, but nobody ever deigned to offer her a compliment so kind.
The fittings were intimate. Unencumbered by the rules of impropriety that dictated how the ton should act, Sienna spent most of their time half dressed, as Genevieve draped the green silk around her figure. Sienna tried to ignore the feeling of hands on her waist, the feeling of fingers brushing against her skin as Genevieve adjusted a pin or tightened a seam.
Certainly, something changed then.
Or maybe the moment things changed was when they started imagining the future together. When Sienna confessed her dream to one day own a share in her own performance venue, Genevieve hadn’t laughed, even though the idea was preposterous. Instead, she’d asked for the details, and imagined a world where their businesses bolstered each other. Supported each other.
Genevieve started to confess how she desired to create her own styles, garments that would break the rules of what proper ladies wore. She had visions of ladies in trousers, which excited Sienna more than she understood at the time.
They traded visions all night, imagining a future in which all their business endeavors came true.
“Imagine Genevieve, what we could do? We could own a house with the money, a home with no man.”
She giggled in reply. “A home with no man in charge. No chaperone. Imagine that?”
“They’d faint at the idea. But we could do it.”
After enough late night talks, enough brandy, their discussions of the future became littered with the word “we.” Their visions melded together, a house with a garden of lilacs, a library with anything they dreamed. All supported by their business endeavors. They created their own fictional future, a future that always seemed to include the two of them together.
Maybe the real moment things changed started in the gentleman’s club. Sienna had spent years training her mind to drift during these interactions. She wore her seductive smiles, which earned her the nighttime visitors who helped pay her wage. She found that focusing too much, being too present in the moment, could hurt ones soul more than she cared for.
It was one of these evenings, tucked away in a private room with a gentleman who took liberties with her for a fare, that her mind drifted to Genevieve. As his hands moved down her body, she imagined how Genevieve’s hands would feel. She wondered how Genevieve relieved herself of this heat, she knew her friend hadn’t taken a suitor in many months. She found herself wondering how her friend touched, what her voice sounded like when she made love. She wondered how her friend tasted. Wondered if women felt very different than men in bed.
As the man above her grunted and finished, Sienna felt her heart race. The new thoughts scared her.
Sienna was not a woman easily scared, but there were curiosities that led to satisfaction, and then there were curiosities that should never be acknowledged. She felt that this new thought pattern of hers was certainly the latter, a dangerous game she should not play.
She told herself it was for the best, when in the weeks to come she stopped her visits. Told herself everything was fine when she passed by the modiste’s shop, stopped herself from knocking on the back door to blow their friendship to bits.
Sienna could not have what she suddenly desired, and she should not put her friend in harms way simply because her brain had concocted such a ridiculous notion.
She thought she could avoid the certain pain, until one night she received a knock on her door. She opened it to find a furious Genevieve on her doorstep.
“You disappeared. I thought you might be dead or unwell, but your performances continue without a hitch. So clearly it is me who you avoid.”
Sienna didn’t know what to say, so she guided Genevieve inside.
“I am worried for us.”
Genevieve scoffed. “An interesting way to show your worry.”
Sienna felt her blood boil. Genevieve could not understand. Could not understand how Sienna was protecting her by staying away. “Well what are we supposed to do? These dreams we create, these fantasies we live in. We cannot have them”
“Since when did you give up so easily?”
“There are fights you can win, and fights you cannot. I am not going to set myself up for failure.”
Genevieve looked livid. “Why are you so intent on playing by somebody else’s rules? Why do we make so many sacrifices if not for our freedom?”
This woman drove Sienna mad. How could she dare yell at her about sacrifices? Sienna was willing to sacrifice the joy she felt around Genevieve to keep her safe.
Genevieve stepped closer, placed her hand over Sienna’s. Sienna felt her heart race.
“We don’t have to live by their rules.”
Sienna lost what was left of her control. She kissed Genevieve. Her stomach lurched in fear, but her body melted at the softness. Genevieve’s smell, her lips, the softness. Sienna felt dizzy.
It was over quickly, Genevieve staring at Sienna for a moment before a soft smile played on Genevieve’s lips. “So you are the brave woman I know.”
Before Sienna could respond, Genevieve leaned back in, kissing Sienna and pulling her closer. She felt Genevieve’s body press up against her own, felt heat pool in her stomach at the closeness, at Genevieve’s hands on her hips holding her flush to her.
In the months to come, they would both try to trace where it started. Sienna eventually shared all the moments she’d been noticing Genevieve, many of them unconscious. Genevieve had her own starting points, her own moments to share.
When they moved into the same building, pulled off the coup of living together and sharing a bed while nobody was the wiser, they had all the time to argue over the starting point.
Eventually they could admit there was no start. They’d slipped into love quietly, away from the watching eye of the world. Their love had grown in small touches, in laughter, in dreams. A connection that pulled them closer and closer together until they finally figured out how to fall into each others’s arms.